The present invention relates to musical systems, and more particularly to a digital electronic system for encoding, storing and decoding of musical note values and time values therefor for ultimate display at a musical instrument for indicating the proper notes to be played at their time values.
Various attempts have been made to facilitate learning in the playing of a musical instrument or the learning of a new musical composition. Applicant is unaware of any entirely satisfactory method or device which provides a significant aid to either the relatively untrained individual who desires to play a musical instrument or the trained individual who desires to rapidly learn a new musical composition or song. Typically, one must become familiar with the instrument and music, including the various notes and time values thereof, and then must tediously practice to become proficient on the instrument or in successfully performing a new composition. Although various devices have been developed, such as attachments for guitars, chord organs, overlays and lights for keyboard instruments, and so forth, none provides a significant solution. One suggested approach for keyboard instruments is described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,771,406 wherein data representative of notes is encoded and stored, and then replayed to operate lights adjacent respective keys of an electronic organ.
On the other hand, applicant has developed a system which is believed to substantially simplify the process of learning to play a musical instrument, and which readily allows one or more persons to play or learn a composition together. While not intended to be limited thereby, the present invention in a preferred form is described for use with guitars and similar types of stringed instruments. In this preferred form, the display provided, and which is controlled by the system of the present invention, is in the form of an X-Y display to indicate both the string to be played and the note to be played on that particular string, as well as the time value or duration of the note. In an exemplary embodiment, the system accommodates three guitars to enable three persons to play together.
In the preferred exemplary embodiment, the system can be programmed to display the location of the note to be played on instruments such as lead guitar, bass guitar and chord guitar. The system includes a recording system for recording data indicative of the notes for each instrument and the time values. The system further includes a playback system for allowing playback from a storage medium, such as a standard cassette, and conversion of the data to drive appropriate displays on the musical instruments.
The exemplary system includes an entry keyboard for entering data bits indicative of the notes to be played and for entering data bits indicative of the time values of the notes. In addition, the keyboard enables addressing of a memory so as to change any stored data bits as desired. The keyboard also provides other functions such as start (or run), stop, clear, and so forth. The keyboard communicates through an interface with a read/write memory having a capacity, for example, of 2048 data words. A number of data words are stored in the memory representing a number of notes of a song for one or more instruments and the time values of the notes. Then, these data words can be read from the memory and multiplexed in a time fashion to provide a serial data output representative of the notes and time values. This serial data is recorded on a suitable storage medium, such as on a standard cassette by a standard cassette recorder.
The playback unit receives the serial data from the cassette, converts the data words into parallel data, and then decodes or multiplexes the data to provide signals to the displays of each of the instruments.
It is a principal object of the present invention to provide an improved electronic system for enabling display of musical note value and time value therefor.
Another object of this invention is to provide a new electronic system for driving an X-Y display for a musical instrument for indicating notes and time values therefor.
A further object of this invention is to provide a system for controlling musical note indicators of a plurality of musical instruments.
An additional object of this invention is to provide a new form of data recording system for recording data representative of musical notes and time values therefor.
Another object of this invention is to provide a playback system for driving note indicators of one or more musical instruments.